Linus tries to make himself scale

An Anonymous Reader writes “Are the problems with the 2.4 kernel indicative of a failed source code control system, weak programming, poor management, increasing kernel complexity, or an overwhelmed lead developer? The debate rages in the Linux community.

Okay everybody, this is getting rediculous (sic). Patches FROM MAINTAINERS are getting dropped on the floor on a regular basis. This is burning out maintainers and is increasing the number of different kernel trees (not yet a major fork, but a lot of cracks and fragmentation are showing under the stress). Linus needs an integration lieutenant, and he needs one NOW.
The problem to Landley’s eyes was that “Linus doesn’t scale, and his current way of coping is to silently drop the vast majority of patches submitted to him onto the floor.” Because of this, Landley argued, the 2.4 kernel very nearly forked, maintainers were burning out, and needed fixes were not getting into the kernel. His proposed solution is to have a single person act as Linus’s patch tracker to make sure things don’t get lost.”

The full story is at http://www.linuxworld.com/site-stories/2002/0211.scale.html